John Adam Fromson MD

John A. Fromson, MD, is vice chair for community psychiatry at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and chief of psychiatry at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital. He is also editor of the online CareerCenter for Physicians of the New England Journal of Medicine.

His clinical and research activities focus on issues relating to physician and medical student health, professional development, and patient safety. He was the founding director and served as president of Physician Health Services, a national model for identifying and monitoring physicians and medical students with substance use disorders and mental and physical illness. He is chair of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry's Committee on Physician Health, past chair of the American Psychiatric Association's Committee on Physician Health, Illness and Impairment, and past president of the Federation of State Physician Health Programs. In 2010 he was elected Class A Trustee of the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous, Inc. (AA).

Dr. Fromson is also past president of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Errors. During his term, the Coalition developed two statewide collaborative projects to support hospitals in implementing safe practices in the areas of reconciling medications and communicating critical test results. These were subsequently adopted by the Joint Commission in its National Patient Safety Goals for 2005 through 2008. Three-year funding for these projects was provided by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). He also chaired its Restraint Consensus Group which developed the first statewide best practices for creating restraint-free environments in hospitals, long-term care, and psychiatric facilities.

For his work in the areas of patient safety and physician and medical student health, Dr. Fromson is the recipient of the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society's 2008 Outstanding Psychiatrist Award for Advancement of the Profession. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Dr. Fromson is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and received the Harvard Medical School Excellence in Tutoring Award for the academic years 2007 and 2010. He received the 2016 Distinguished Clinician Award from Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Harvard Medical School Class of 2017 Excellence in Clinical Instruction Award.